Decisively Average

Aaron Wall
August 18th, 2008.

Seth Godin recently published a post about the dead zone between being real and being polished: "It's the banal stuff in the middle that people don't read. And yet, 95% of what I see is precisely in the dead spot of the middle zone. "

I firmly try to stay in the "real" category (largely because I can't tolerate the polished up fake stuff), though someone sent me an anonymous email today telling me I need to polish it up

You know a lot, but

• it needs to be made far simpler for laymen
• cut back on the jargon
• skip the rare profanity. It’s is a real turn off for traditional people
• you could take a more professional picture

If I tried to take their advice I would end up with a watered down brand in the dead zone. Years ago one of my mentors gave me this advice

I think the best brands, the best sites have a large portion of their founders personality in them. Never be afraid to be yourself, after all there are 1/2 billion people on the www, not all of them have to agree with you. Concentrate on the ones that share your views, concentrate on making their experience the very best it can be, the rest forget them.

Or to put it another way, the best sites say - this is what we do, this is how we do it, if you don't like it go somewhere else.